Kafka?! An Interdisciplinary Conference in Honor of Walter Sokel

April 16, 2015
Hannes Richter

An interdisciplinary conference at the University of Virginia explored one of Europe's quintessential authors, Franz Kafka, between February 25-27, 2015. The three day event included lectures, discussions and film screenings.

100 years after the first publication of the "Metamorphosis" and after the emergence of "The Trial", Franz Kafka is one of the most interpreted authors of European modernism, but still one of the enigmatic. It seems that everybody is looking for the final clue to "The Castle" but nobody has found it yet. The fascination continues and even after a century of reception history, research is ongoing.

Walter H. Sokel (1917-2014) was Commonwealth Professor of German Literature at the University of Virginia from 1973 until his retirement in 1994. He escaped from his native Austria in 1938 and made his way to the United States where, in due time, he became a leading member of that generation of immigrant Jewish intellectuals whose impact on the American university system can be felt even today.

The conference was sponsored by the Austrian Embassy, Washington, DC; The Embassy of the Czech Republic, Washington, DC; The Center of German Studies, University of Virginia; the Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures, University of Virginia; the Jewish Studies Program, University of Virginia; the Center for Politics, University of Virginia and the Kafka Society of America.